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Last year Transpose developer Secret Location dabbled with the VR movie genre. The result was The Great C, an excellent virtual take on a short story by Philip K. Dick. From this week, you’ll be able to watch it before jetting off around the world.

Secret Location this week announced partnerships with Inflight VR and Skylights. Both agreements will see The Great C brought to both company’s pre-flight VR offerings. For Inflight VR it’s available at the Paris Star Alliance lounges at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and Fiumicino Airport in Rome. Skylight’s offering is also available to Business and First Class passengers at Charles de Gaulle. Expansions to other airports are coming later this year.

It’d be great to see the experience available as an in-flight VR movie but The Great C currently isn’t available on mobile headsets. Somehow we don’t think anyone wants to lug a heavy VR rig onto a plane to get a Rift working either. Nevermind then making the space for room-scale.

In-flight VR has long been touted as a great potential use case for VR. You can see why; imagine being able to slip away from the dingey isle seat next to the screaming child and into a comfy virtual apparently where you can switch on Netflix and kick back.

The Great C is a sci-fi short set in a post-apocalyptic world. You follow two young villagers as they embark on a long journey to appease a mysterious machine. The app is one of the longest VR movies out there with a run time of over 30 minutes.

The inevitable has finally happened; Five Nights at Freddy’s VR is (very likely) on the way.

An ESRB listing for Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted popped up late last week. It’s since been taken down but Bloody Disgusting caught the below screen grab. According to the description, the game will see players repair the animatronic characters that stalk them in the main series. The listing says that game is coming to PS4, so that obviously means PSVR support is included.

It also states that the game contains ‘frequent’ jump scares. Oh good.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a horror series notorious for its jump scares. They’ve haunted many a Youtuber. It’s been a fair few years since the series’ last numbered release, which makes this VR game feel somewhat belated. Still, we’re sure those that love a good fright are more than ready to jump into this twisted world in VR.

Given that the game was rated by the ESRB we’d expect an announcement soon. Ubisoft’s Space Junkies was outed on the platform a few weeks before the reveal, for example. We’ll likely have to wait for an official announcement before we hear about plans for PC VR and a release date etc.

This won’t be the series’ first brush with VR, though. Back in 2017 we reported that a fan was remaking the original game in VR. The experience has since been released in Early Access so, if you’re desperate to poop yourself in VR right now, you could always start there.

Palmer Luckey is launching a repair kit for an Oculus Rift audio cutout issue. Luckey founded Oculus back in early 2012, but was fired by Facebook in 2017.

Image from Palmer Luckey

Luckey claims the issue is caused by “eventual failure of the complex electromechanical assembly”. He describes this as a design flaw, rather than an intentional tradeoff.

He is not the first to notice the flaw. Many Oculus forums users have documented the issue for years now. User phoenixdigital even posted detailed diagrams of the possible failure points.

Image from Oculus Forums user phoenixdigital

So how can you get this kit? Well Luckey is clear that his solution should be the last resort, not the first. You’ll first need to contact Oculus Support about your issue. If you’re under warranty, they are “generally willing” to replace your headset according to Luckey. If you’re not, sometimes the issue can be software or just loose cables.

But if troubleshooting fails and Oculus Support won’t replace your headset, you then forward your support ticket to RiftRepairOne@gmail.com (along with your address) and the inventor will send you the kit free of charge.

The kit is designed so the “average PC gamer” can easily install it. It weighs around 32 grams. It can also add a 3.5mm jack to your Rift, so you can easily use external audio sources too.

So why is he doing this? It’s coming up to two years since the Luckey has been at Oculus. But the inventor was still the face of Oculus in 2016 when the Rift launched. If the Rift was being promoted in an interview, he would be the person giving the answers. He even hand delviered the first Rift in March 2016. Luckey claims he feels bad for the people who bought a Rift from him and now can’t use it properly- and this is his way of solving the problem.

When asked for comment on the Rift audio issue and whether it was fixed in manufacturing, a Facebook spokesperson told us:

“To provide people with the best experience, our team is always working to make Rift better through continued improvements to the product. Customer feedback is integral to this process, so we encourage people to reach out to Oculus Support directly if they feel like they’re experiencing an issue with their Rift.”

Though Apple and Google both improved their augmented reality tools for developers last year, AR didn’t have a particularly strong 2018, as consumers largely shrugged off new AR apps and hardware. But the Lego Group announced an intriguing new initiative today: a collection of eight “haunted” building sets that can be enjoyed by themselves, or paired with a new AR app that adds spooky virtual elements to explore.

All set in the town of Newbury, the Lego Hidden Side sets will range in price from $20 to $130, with models including a bus, graveyard, and schoolhouse. In physical form, the models will be seen as they appear by day, while the AR app will show them infested with ghosts at night.

Lego’s free Hidden Side app lets kids choose between one of two characters to explore the sets from a first-person perspective, using Android or iOS devices to discover and capture the virtual ghosts. The AR app will prompt kids to discover new parts of the real-world models, and change the AR experience as kids physically manipulate the sets.

“At our core we focus on tactile building,” explained Lego SVP Tom Donaldson, “but AR presents opportunities to enhance physical LEGO play with new action and mastery elements. We’re breaking the mold of gaming-first AR play experiences to create a new type of play where the physical world actually influences the AR layer, instead of the other way around.”

Lego Hidden Side builds on the Lego AR Playgrounds initiative announced at Apple’s 2018 WWDC. After showing a prototype on stage with impressive but largely cosmetic interactions between a Lego set and an iOS app, the company released Lego Ninjago AR playsets as “early experiments” to see how AR could enhance physical play.

The Lego Group says Hidden Side will be the first time it introduces a play theme as a service, with promises to keep adding new challenges, ghosts, and randomized gameplay to the app to keep it fresh. Kids will also be able to play several small games inside the Hidden Side app without using building sets.

The Hidden Side sets will hit stores around the world in late summer. iOS and Android apps are planned to hit the App Store and Google Play for free at the same time.

These AR holograms look good enough to eat. Part of the experience of going to a good restaurant is being presented with lots of tempting choices. When faced with page upon page of delicious and intriguing descriptions, some of us fall back on trusty favorites (my husband will order a steak nine times out of

An audience member sits in the center of the room. He adorns an HTC Vive Pro and finds himself sitting at the end of a bed. We can see what he sees via a monitor at the back of the room. He looks toward a mirror and sees his virtual self. Leaning in for a closer look, he raises his hand to wave. Despite not wearing any extra gear or carrying any controllers, the reflection waves back.

Opposite the participant sits a man clad in Vive Trackers. They form a makeshift motion capture suit that brings him into the virtual world. He’s imitating the audience member’s every move. It’s done with such precision that he really believes his movements are being mirrored in VR. Everyone in the room is completely silent and utterly transfixed. We’re equal parts enraptured by this small miracle and terrified that one slight noise might shatter the illusion. Without even entering VR, we’re all a part of the experience.

It’s Creative XR’s mission to make experiences like this a reality. The UK programme is assembled by tech innovation center Digital Catapult and Arts Council England. Every year it puts out a call for artists and studios to pitch projects that go beyond gaming. Successful applicants get funding and access to resources. As this year’s application process kicks off, CreativeXR gathered 2018’s recipients in one space to showcase their latest work. Together, they make a compelling case for VR’s inclusion in the arts space.

And that’s an important case to make. As Ben Lane, Senior Manager, Enterprise and Innovation at Arts Council says, these projects “probably wouldn’t happen” without this help.

“It’s easy to see how these technologies can be employed in games, but the technology also has potential as a creative medium beyond this,” Lane adds. “The ability of immersive technology to provide innovative experiences for audiences – new ways of telling stories, immersing people in different environments, both real and imagined and to nurture empathy – is obviously fertile ground for artists to explore.”

Reinvigorating History And Science

Over the course of an afternoon, I explored that ground. I was whisked away to the edge of time and history to face truths both awe-inspiring and uncomfortable. Some projects, like All Seeing Eyes’ Immersive Histories, explore well-trodden paths for VR. The company’s build out a wooden rig to resemble a Lancaster bomber used in the second world war. You strap on a headset and find yourself in the middle of the storied Dambusters raids that saw British fighters destroy the Mohne Dam in Germany in 1943.

It’s a cramped, atmospheric piece designed to root you in the moment. If anything it showcases the need to support these sorts of projects; I only wished it could have enjoyed the sorts of production values Oculus or PlayStation would lavish upon their portfolios.

Speaking of Oculus projects, I found a fitting companion piece to the awesome power of Spheres in When Something Happens. This VR short from Boom Clap Play, written and narrated by poet Boston Williams,

Walmart’s cavernous stores apparently aren’t large enough to hold the Hidden World in DreamWorks’ latest How to Train Your Dragon film. Instead, the retailer announced today that it will use its parking lots to host free five-minute VR dragon-riding experiences — and the expected significant lines of people — in an effort to spur merchandise sales at matching gift shops.

Developed by Walmart-backed Spatial& in partnership with DreamWorks, the endeavor looks more like a theme park installation than a traditional retail experience. Visitors as young as 8 years old are allowed to participate in the action, which starts with a character greeting at an onboarding tent before moving into a VR world powered by headsets and motion VR chairs. Since the goal of the free ride is to sell merchandise, guests are led directly to a themed gift shop right after they take off the VR gear.

A YouTube video of the experience shows fully computer-generated fantasy scenes that look as if they could be straight out of a modern video game, though kids and adults aren’t handed controllers or actually playing anything. Instead, they get to see 360-degree videos and high-resolution images with VR head tracking, all designed to elicit emotional responses.

Walmart and Spatial& specifically expect that people will want to buy items “featuring the characters they befriended and created deep connections with during the activation,” including toys, DVDs, and video games. The immersive virtual tour of the Hidden World includes How to Train Your Dragon characters such as Astrid, Hiccup, Hookfang, and Toothless, with greetings during onboarding by Ruffnut and Tuffnut.

“Collaborating with DreamWorks Animation and its iconic How to Train Your Dragon franchise is such an exciting way to bring Spatial&’s first ever activation to the public,” said Spatial& CEO Katie Finnegan. “Spatial& was founded based on the belief that VR will transform merchandising and retail and we can’t wait to finally share this uniquely immersive shopping experience with consumers across the country.”

Though the collaboration certainly isn’t the first to leverage VR to sell things, it’s a particularly interesting experiment in that correlations between the experience and purchases will be fairly easy to track, and the promise of free VR experiences based on a well-liked movie franchise could be enough to draw crowds. It’s also somewhat unique in that Walmart has chosen to site the project outside of its stores — in winter, no less — rather than utilizing space inside.

Walmart will start offering the experiences over several days at multiple stores in one city before moving on to another city. The seven-city run begins at noon February 15 in Los Angeles, California, and concludes in Bentonville, Arkansas on April 9.

Last year, Amazon used VR to create virtual selling spaces inside Indian shopping malls where it wasn’t operating physical stores. Similarly, retailers such as Macy’s have started to use VR inside their stores to let customers browse inventory that would otherwise be too broad or large to stock locally.